American Beauty

[BroadwayBoy2]

Posted: 9/13/08 at 1:45pm

I just felt like this is such an important movie, that we should revive a thread on here devoted to it.

[jasonf]

Posted: 9/13/08 at 2:02pm

I'm not sure about important, but it is one of my favorites

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/13/08 at 2:14pm

Well, since you started this thread... why do you feel it's "important" as opposed to just "good?"

[BroadwayBoy2]

Posted: 9/13/08 at 3:35pm

i think this way because I feel people need to look closer at aspects of life. Its the catch phrase of this movie and i believe it fits perfectly with the moive. not to mention anything with Kevin Spacey is worth your time!

[christhefish]

Posted: 9/13/08 at 4:26pm

I can't help but disagree, it is overrated, its a solid film but I don't understand how it is that important. Its an exaggerated look at suburban American life and its full of clichés. Updated On: 9/13/08 at 04:26 PM

[Weez]

Posted: 9/13/08 at 7:43pm

I was reading a website the other day that perfectly summed up how I feel about That Scene:

The famous 'plastic bag blowing in the wind' scene from American Beauty is quite Narmy — not so much for the idea that the scene represents (that art and beauty are all around us in unlikely places), but for the sheer pretentious awe that the characters in that scene regard that little plastic bag and the message it represents, as if it's something really deep and original that no one else has ever thought of, with one character intoning "Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I don't think I can take it," as if he's just discovered the cure for cancer. Sometimes a bag is just a bag, guys.

It's even funnier once you learn that they were only able to get the bag to dance around like that by having two crew members out of shot with leaf blowers.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Narm/Film

Sadly, the rest of the film doesn't play any less pretentious to me. Sorry. I'll concede that it's possibly quite good, if you're even able to take it seriously, but important? *snrk*

[Jane2]

Posted: 9/13/08 at 7:56pm

"Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I don't think I can take it," as if he's just discovered the cure for cancer. Sometimes a bag is just a bag, guys.

Couldn't have said it better myself. As far as the film goes, vastly overrated and pretentious.

[Weez]

Posted: 9/13/08 at 8:17pm

... some days, I swear, it feels like all my favourite people are called Jane.

[Jane2]

Posted: 9/13/08 at 8:27pm

Why Weezie, thank you so much! Likewise!

I called you weezie not because of the show Movin on Up, but from the Little Rascals. There was an adorable kid named Weezer on there.

[Jane2]

Posted: 9/13/08 at 8:31pm

Here's Weezer, Weezie!

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/13/08 at 9:33pm

This movie irritated the crap out of me when I first saw it. I appreciated the performances, and that was about it.

It's grown on my quite a bit over the years, and I now think it's a brilliant film. A modern-day "Death of a Salesman" even... but not necessarily as "important" as they seemed to want it to be (especially so very pseudo-profoundly in those last moments).

I agree that the floating plastic bag, as "deep art" or "beauty" bugged the hell out of me. It still makes me wince a little, but not as much.

And I think I figured out why it sets me off.

I completely agree that beauty can be found in the most simple of places, and the least likely as well.

However... it's the ARTIST's perception that I'm interested in seeing. Not my own as "the audience."

I'd love to see Van Gogh's plastic baggy, or Monet's or Picasso's.

I don't want an artist to stand me in front of a baggy, and say, "Here... YOU do the work. YOU find the pretty."

No, you're the artist! Show me what you're seeing. Give me your impression of the floating baggy. Let me experience it through your vision.

The floating baggy itself is NOT art. It's just a baggy. But it's the artist's perception of that baggy that can become "art."

To summarize... I think this is "slacker art." They stand me in front of an object and say, "Here, YOU make it interesting and compelling in your own mind. I'm just going to tell you that it's already interesting and compelling."

That's like an actor saying to the audience, "You just imagine that I am giving a brilliant performance tonight. Thanks!"

*bows*

Not good enough.

That's why that last scene irritates me so much. It's slacker art.

You have a subject.
You have an artist.
You have an audience.

They're trying to present something to me without actually doing any work. They're cutting out the middle man. The ARTIST himself!

That was long-winded... but somewhere in there is a point.

You do the work and think I'm brilliant. I'll just be a slacker-poster.

[ray-andallthatjazz86]

Posted: 9/14/08 at 2:31am

Besty, that was anything but a slacker-post. It was actually a pretty brilliant and fascinating description of an artist's job. Thanks for that great post.

[Kasie]

Posted: 9/14/08 at 2:36am

I agree. I never thought about it that way...at all.

What a great description of that whole "bag" concept.

[Roscoe]

Posted: 9/14/08 at 5:25pm

Useless film, almost completely devoid of value, except as an example of how a really useless and derivative pile of tripe can pull the wool over the eyes of a lot of people who really should know better.

A handy batch of Sodom In The Suburb Indie Cinema Cliches, complete with a sort of bogus "uplifting" ending so that the folks at the mall won't be too startled.

Rubbish, except for Chris Cooper and Wes Bentley.

Watch THE ICE STORM, SEX LIES & VIDEOTAPE, LOLITA, HAPPINESS etc. to see the really interesting and successful films that Alan Ball rips off so shamelessly, and to see what a miserable failure this AMERICAN BEAUTY crapfest really is.

Updated On: 9/14/08 at 05:25 PM

[javero]

Posted: 9/14/08 at 5:57pm

Gotta admit that this movie and 'Running with Scissors' are two of my guilty pleasures. Much of my fondness for them has to do with my fave screen actress Annette Bening.

[RockabyeHamlet]

Posted: 9/14/08 at 11:12pm

F**** ME YOUR MAJESTY!

- That is all that needs to be said about this film.

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/14/08 at 11:59pm

LOL.

Annette Bening's finest performance.

[RockabyeHamlet]

Posted: 9/15/08 at 12:04am

In all honesty, it was.

[ShbrtAlley44]

Posted: 9/15/08 at 3:00am

I think Spacey's and Bening's performances are laughable and that the movie is completely overrated. I do think Chris Cooper, Allison Janney, Wes Bentley, and Mena Suvari do great work, particularly Cooper. His little whimper as he kisses Spacey is heartbreaking. Thora Birch does nothing for me, and Spacey is so incredibly mannered I found myself wanting to shoot him before anyone else could do it.

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 9/15/08 at 11:08am

Hated it then; would hate it now if someone could actually force me to watch.

Spacey has given the same performance in every film he's in.

And Benning just "acts" all over the place.

Glad to hear it's not just me who found it to be a load of hooey(and no offense intended to those who loved it; it just didn't work for me at all).

[Roscoe]

Posted: 9/15/08 at 11:17am

I saw some of it on cable recently, just in the interest of seeing if maybe, just maybe, I was wrong about the movie, and I have to say that I wasn't, it really is as silly and shallow now as it was when it was released, and the performance from that Spacey creature is just beneath contempt.

Only Chris Cooper and Wes Bentley manage to breathe some life and real pain into their cliched characters. Although I've never understood what on earth that tasty Ricky Fitts is doing interested in that little dishrag of a girl. Couldn't he have found someone more interesting to run off with?

[Pippin]

Posted: 9/15/08 at 12:59pm

"Ricky Fitts is doing interested in that little dishrag of a girl. Couldn't he have found someone more interesting to run off with? "

well, I know you will already have contempt for my post, Roscoe, since you hate the movie so, but I daresay that that comment tells me that you have missed the entire point of the movie.

He goes out with her because he is the character in the film who is able to see through bull***t. and he doesn't make his judgements based on appearances. He sees that there is a special spark inside of that "ugly, normal" girl. And he is not distracted by the "perfect and beautiful" cheerleader. he sees right through her and realized she is a shell of a human being, and tells her so at the end of the film, just before they run away, calling her ordinary and boring.

The juxtaposition of the two girls is so interesting (and no, not original) because it sets up the question what is beauty? is it merely what we have been taught to see? someone sexy, skinny, blonde, and well-endowed? or is beauty more in the eye of the beholder, whose values lie in something other than external beauty?

I know you hate the film. and others do to, as seen by the responses in this thread. I don't care. it is my favorite film, I love the performances and the cinematograpy, though I haven't seen it in awhile, but in the eye of THIS beholder, I think it is a beautiful film with an uplifting bitter-sweet message, and it makes me happy.

And Bening should have won that oscar over Spacey.

and B12- I love that explanation.

Updated On: 9/15/08 at 12:59 PM

[Roscoe]

Posted: 9/15/08 at 1:52pm

Thanks for sharing, Pippin. Glad you like it. One person's shallow is another person's deep.

[blueroses]

Posted: 9/15/08 at 2:14pm

Pippin, I thought Russell Crowe deserved the Oscar that year for The Insider. I liked Annette Bening, but Swank deserved it for Boys Don't Cry. Bening should have won a couple years later for Being Julia.

[Pippin]

Posted: 9/15/08 at 2:16pm

that poor woman is the Lucci of the Oscars.

and I am not a fan of Swank, really, so that is just my personal bias.